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List of regions of Kentucky
The map provides references for the descriptions below. Some are geologic regions and some are geographic, so many of them overlap. * The Bluegrass, in the north-central part of the state, where the bedrock is of Ordovician age, the oldest in Kentucky. The Inner Bluegrass, visible on a more detailed geologic map of the state, is the site of Thoroughbred horse farms. The Outer Bluegrass is hillier and its dominant livestock is beef cattle. * Central Kentucky is an often-used but ill-defined term. It is safely applied to any place between Lexington/Fayette, Hustonville in southern Lincoln County and Elizabethtown in Hardin County. * Cumberland Plateau or Eastern Coal Field, with bedrock of Pennysylvanian age. When people say "Eastern Kentucky," this is usually what they mean. * Jackson Purchase Generally, the area west of the Tennessee River, purchased from the Chickasaw Indians by Gen. Andrew Jackson and former Kentucky Gov. Isaac Shelby in 1818. Geologically, it is part of the Mississippi Embayment. * Kentucky Bend is the exclave formed by the Mississippi River and the westward extension of the boundary with Tennessee. It is not a region but part of the Jackson Purchase. * The Knobs are conical hills and hogback ridges that lie east, south and west of the Bluegrass, demarcated in the western half by Muldraugh's Hill, a large escarpment. A major bedrock unit is Devonian oil shale, red on the map. It also has rocks of Silurian age. * Northern Kentucky is usually defined as the three northernmost counties and the urbanized areas of those that border them. It is part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area. * Pennyroyal Plateau Called the Pennyrile in Western Kentucky, it was named for a wild mint that grows there. It has three sections: eastern, running east from a few miles east of Glasgow in Barren County; west, running from there to the Tennessee and Ohio rivers; and the north section, north of a narrow, spotty salient of the Clifty Area that ends at Frenchman Knob near Bonnieville in northern Hart County. This region is the one most dominated by karst topography: sinkholes and underground water channels. These rocks are of Mississippian age; a region of Mississipian rock that runs between the Knobs and the Cumberland Plateau is not considered part of the Pennyroyal, but a transitional zone. (The counties with the greatest expanse of this narrow zone, Lewis and Rowan, are usually defined as part of northeastern Kentucky, along with the five coalfield counties to the east.) * South Central Kentucky or (more recently) Southern Kentucky: Generally, the eastern Pennyroyal and an area to the west, ending around Auburn in Logan County. To the west, large row-crop agriculture dominates, and people are more likely to say they live in Western Kentucky. * Western Coal Field also includes the Clifty Area, which contains no coal but is also of Pennsylvanian age. Place names include Clifty in Todd County and Big Clifty in Grayson County. * Western Kentucky: A line drawn north from Auburn reaches the Ohio River in Hancock County, which is generally thought of as part of Western Kentucky. The term "West Kentucky" is often used, mainly by people who live west of Princeton in Caldwell County. References Category:List of regions of Kentucky